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North Carolina Health News
North Carolina has lost almost 5 percent of its licensed child care programs since the pandemic began
More licensed child care programs in North Carolina are closing their doors as the state approaches the expiration of pandemic-era stabilization funding. According to data provided by the NC Child Care Resource and Referral Council in partnership with the NC Division of Child Development and Early Education, the state has experienced a net loss of almost 5 percent of programs since February 2020.
New freestanding ERs: faster care, but it can cost you
From SouthPark to Steele Creek, Mountain Island Lake to Waxhaw, sleek and efficient freestanding emergency rooms are springing up across the Charlotte region to serve patients, no hospital required. Since 2010, Atrium Health has opened eight standalone emergency rooms in the Charlotte metro area, part of a nationwide building boom....
Urgent Care? Hospital ED? Freestanding ED?
With urgent cares, freestanding emergency rooms and special orthopedic and behavioral centers opening across the state, deciding where to go for a medical emergency is more complicated than it used to be, when the hospital ER was the only option. Doctors said they often get calls from friends and family...
The impact of legalized sports betting on college athletes, gamblers and North Carolina
The student-athletes on UNC-Chapel Hill’s baseball team have received negative messages from fans expecting certain performances before. But now that sports betting is legal in North Carolina, as of March 11, the messages and pressure from sports bettors may increase. Carter Hicks, the baseball director of player and program...
Making a case for oral health care and more access to dentists
If a group of dentists, policymakers and health care analysts got their way, North Carolina would do some revamping of its oral health care infrastructure to make routine cleanings and preventative care more accessible to hundreds of thousands of people. If routine dental care were more accessible to large segments...
Parents of overdose victims press lawmakers for better Good Samaritan laws
GREENSBORO — Randy Abbott lost his daughter to a drug overdose in 2015. No one called for help in time. Diannee Carden’s son died from a heroin overdose in 2012. No one called for help in time. As North Carolina continues to lose more people to overdoses every...
Planting the seeds for a care farm to help people with mental health needs
The impulse to retreat to nature to improve and sustain one’s mental health has a long history — from the times of Hippocrates, who’s often credited with saying “nature is the physician of diseases,” to Henry David Thoreau who voyaged into the woods to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”
Former employees say short-staffed NC psych hospital rife with violence, abuse
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article mentions self-harm, suicide, sexual assault, violence and psychiatric hospitalization. If you need mental health support, call or text 988 or consult this resources page. This article was co-published with WRAL-TV. By Taylor Knopf. In June last year, 11-year-old Henry picked up a sharp object and...
HCA pruned staff at Mission Hospital, reaped soaring profits, academic study finds
Staff cuts have driven up patient-care profits at Mission Hospital in Asheville after HCA Healthcare acquired the facility, according to a draft report by Mark Hall, director of the health law and policy program at Wake Forest University. The report tracked the hospital’s profits from 2011 to 2022 and compared...
North Carolina to expand peer-led crisis services in push for more mental health support
North Carolinians in need of mental health support now have more places to call — and soon will have more places to go — for help. The state health department is investing more money in a greater array of mental health crisis services, including those run by peer support specialists.
Rural communities face primary care physician shortage
A new study from the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Robert Graham Center (AAFP), co-funded by the Milbank Memorial Fund and The Physicians Foundation, has found that communities across the country are struggling to meet the demand for primary care physicians, as well as to retain those physicians in their communities. While it’s difficult all over, Dr. Yalda Jabbarpour, lead researcher on the study, said, it is more difficult for rural communities.
“We can make more success stories”: State leaders mobilize to strengthen reentry support
Ninety-five percent of incarcerated people in North Carolina prisons will one day return home — roughly 18,000 people this year alone. But walking out of the doors of a prison often marks the start of new hardships and challenges as people work to rebuild their lives in the community. For most people, the path holds a variety of obstacles that can be distressing and difficult to overcome.
Governor’s health care budget proposals would help NC’s most vulnerable
Now that Gov. Roy Cooper has checked expanding Medicaid off his gubernatorial to-do list, he has shifted his health care focus to the needs of North Carolina’s most vulnerable — the young, the old and the disabled — in his proposed spending plan for the coming fiscal year.
Western North Carolina coalition calls for action on single-use plastic pollution
Seven months after a provision added to the 2023-24 North Carolina state budget prohibited municipalities from establishing single-use plastic bag ordinances, a group of Western North Carolina environmental advocates is pushing back. On Earth Day, against the scenic backdrop of a clear blue sky and the majestic French Broad River,...
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Founded in November 2011 as a North Carolina nonprofit, NCHN is an independent news organization devoted to covering health care in the state.
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